title: QALYs: incorporating the rate of change in quality of life.
abstract: The need for comparisons and economic evaluations between various health care interventions requires the evaluation of health-related quality of life. To ensure comparability in terms of the duration of any given condition, measures of quality have to integrate the parameter of time, as is the case in measures like QALY. Usually, the rate of change of quality that results from a given intervention is not incorporated in these measures, resulting in a systematically erroneous estimation of QALYs. This estimation error may lead to either a lower QALYs' value compared to the true one, when quality of life improves with a decreasing rate or deteriorates with an increasing rate, or to a higher QALYs' value compared to the true one, when quality of life improves with an increasing rate or deteriorates with a decreasing rate. The proposed method for the estimation of QALYs takes into account the rate of change in health-related quality of life at all stages and discloses deviations up to 16.67% from currently used methods.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Nursing, University of Athens.
authors.forename: Theofanis
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Katostaras
authors.forename: Niki
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Katostara
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D015233:Models, Statistical; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000379:methods*; D011788:Quality of Life; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity